SPOILER ALERT: the following article contains massive spoilers, including the ending. If you have not yet seen the movie, proceed at your own risk, or better, come back to this article later!
With Some Kind of Heaven, first-time feature director Lance Oppenheim cracks the manicured facade of The Villages, America’s largest retirement community — a massive, self-contained utopia located in Central Florida. Behind the gates of this palm tree-lined fantasyland, Some Kind of Heaven invests in the dreams and desires of a small group of Villages residents — and one interloper — who are unable to find happiness within the community’s pre-packaged paradise. With strikingly composed cinematography, this candy-colored documentary offers a tender and surreal look at the never-ending quest for finding meaning and love in life’s final act.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Some Kind of Heaven Plot Summary and Synopsis
At The Villages, often called the “Disneyland for Retirees”, we meet four residents living on the margins, striving to find happiness. From synchronized swimming to pickleball, the good life is waiting, as well as a discounted funeral package now at a new, lower price. While most residents have bought into the community’s packaged positivity, married couple Anne and Reggie wrestle with Reggie’s deteriorating grip on reality and psychedelic drug use; Barbara, a widow, seeks second love; and Dennis, an 82-year-old bachelor living out of a van, searches for a wealthy woman to take care of him for his remaining years. Though the film “illustrates the gap between The Villages’ advertising copy and the practical reality of living there”, Some Kind of Heaven invests more in the “dreams and desires of its residents”.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0).